It’s the birthday of Canadian-born poet Mark Strand (1934-2014), who won a Pulitzer for his collection Blizzard of One (1998) and has been called “one of America’s most hauntingly meditative poets” (William Graimes, “Mark Strand, 80, Dies; Pulitzer-Winning Poet Laureate,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2014).

Strand was born on Prince Edward Island in Canada (that’s Mecca for Anne of Green Gables fans), but his father’s work with the Pepsi-Cola company required the family to move a lot, so Strand grew up everywhere from Cleveland and New York to cities in Mexico and Peru. Strand studied at Antioch College (1957) and Yale University (1959), where his interests shifted from painting to poetry. He got a Fulbright to study 19th century Italian poetry in—wait for it—Italy and got an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1962). He then began teaching in lots of shi-shi places like Yale and Harvard.

Strand’s first collection, Sleeping with One Eye Open, came out in 1964. He then published Reasons for Moving (1968), Darker (1970), The Story of Our Lives (1973), and so on, up to Selected Poems (1980), at which point he grew disillusioned with his own poems and stopped writing poetry. Which was a perfectly appropriate angsty thing for a poet to do. He instead wrote several children’s books, including The Planet of Lost Things (1982), The Night Book (1985), and Rembrandt Takes a Walk (1986). He also wrote stories and books of art criticism, including Hopper (1994).

In 1990, Strand got his poetry groove back with the collection The Continuous Life, followed by Dark Harbor (1993), Blizzard of One, Man and Camel (2006), Almost Invisible (2012), and Collected Poems (2014). (I’m skipping a bunch. Sue me.) Strand served as U.S. poet laureate from 1990-91.

Strand’s poetry tends to be taut, surreal, and often focuses on absence and negation.

Strand’s poem “Eating Poetry” begins:

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

(Read the rest here.)

Have a fine Thursday absolutely jam-packed with absence and negation, if that’s your thing, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.